Jewish Counterculture Oral History Project JOEL ROSENBERG
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Jewish Counterculture Oral History Project JOEL ROSENBERG Interviewed by Jayne K. Guberman August 3, 2016 A Project of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania Joel Rosenberg, 08/03/16 Jayne Guberman (JG): My name is Jayne Guberman. Today is Wednesday, August 3, 2016, and I’m here with Joel Rosenberg at his home in Watertown, Massachusetts. And we’re going to record an interview for the Jewish Counterculture Oral History project. Joel, do I have your permission to record this interview? Joel Rosenberg (JR): You do indeed. JG: So as you know, today we’re going to explore your experiences during the late sixties and early seventies with Havurat Shalom. I want to start by talking about your personal and family background to flesh out a bit who you were at the time you first heard about this experimental community that was being started in Boston. So let’s begin with your family, when you were growing up. You were born in 1943 in California. JR: Yes. JG: Can you tell me a little bit about your family when you were growing up.? JR: Well, most of my memories of my family — they used to be fairly vivid, but not so much these days. And I only knew my father for five years (00:01:00) and was only conscious from age three onward really, but I remember him being very affectionate and very kind to me. JG: What did he do? JR: He was a physician by trade. He also, as a hobby, made violins. He would often work well into the night on that and he was a very accomplished man in many ways. He read extensively, he was an investor in real estate for a lot of his career, and he was involved, I guess you could say, in organized Jewish life to a certain extent. My parents were not Orthodox Jewish. They had both had come from somewhat Orthodox backgrounds, as far as I understand it. I actually had a grandma who once served me a kosher meal when I was about eight years old, (00:02:00) which included chicken soup, and when I was asked for a glass of water — I’m sorry, a glass of milk — I was told I couldn’t have it. So that was my introduction to Kashrut, basically. JG: What about your mother? JR: My mother — both my parents lived, in their early years, in Boyle Heights, California, which is a suburb of East Los Angeles. Both their mothers were friends. They were Hungarian immigrants who had come from Central Europe, from I guess what was 1 Joel Rosenberg, 08/03/16 the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. They first settled on the East Coast. My mother was born in Brooklyn, and my father was born in Harrison, New Jersey, all in that New York-New Jersey northern area. They must have left — there was a period when my grandma could not support her kids, and they had to be put in a foster home (00:03:00) for a period of time, which I don’t think my mother liked. My grandfather was — her father was a very irascible man who was sometimes physically violent. I see it now, kind of thinking back on it, in the traumas that I knew. Both my mother and her sisters had a certain degree of trauma from their childhood, and it’s kind of taken me a long time to figure that out, but it’s one of those things you get to know sort of retroactively [see addendum]. JG: Did you have siblings? JR: I have two older sisters; they’re both still alive, thank God. I have a sister who will be turning eighty-five in September, and another who will be turning seventy-nine in October, and they’re both very dear to me, and I try to talk to them on the phone every so often. We often don’t get the perfect time to do it, but in any case, my middle sister is probably (00:04:00) — I’ve called her my closest friends among my blood relatives. My older sister I’m increasingly appreciating, and remembering aspects of her in my childhood, and we talk on the phone every so often, and I like her a lot. She is different in lifestyle, in politics, in a lot of ways that I don’t quite warm up to, but she’s made a very coherent life for herself. And I’m pleased with that. JG: Where did you live when you were growing up? JR: Well I grew up in Westwood, California, which is just west of the UCLA campus. The UCLA campus was pretty new at the time. I know from family home movies — I have sort of a spliced together edition of movies from 1931 to roughly 1948 or ‘49, and so I have a lot of nice views of the backyard from there. (00:05:00) It was kind of — I call it a bucolic paradise because at that time the hills were these empty fields and very lovely groves of eucalyptus trees and other kinds of trees, so I look back on that with great fondness. And I remember — we had two backyards basically. There was one just outside the rear of the house, and then you would go through a brick fence, a brick wall via a fence, and there would be another somewhat larger backyard. JG: What kind of a community was Westwood during this time? JR: Well, I would call it probably mostly WASP. I would say there was a sort of ethnically mixed neighborhood. My rear-fence neighbors were the family of a film producer named David Weissbart. And his daughter Vicky was a friend of mine, and an 2 Joel Rosenberg, 08/03/16 older daughter of his, Bettyann (00:06:00) was someone I also knew. And in fact, Bettyann I knew into my adult life because she coincidentally was friends of other friends of mine. Anyhow, that’s how I knew them. And they were Jewish. JG: And socio-economically? JR: Socio-economically, it was pretty upper-middle-class. My father earned a good living. He very likely got rental money from the properties he bought. But at the same time, I mention on my interview questionnaire that we were in for some financial instability after my father died. Because my mother had not really a means of making a living for herself, and she was often strapped for cash, so properties got sold off and art and antiques and various other things that my father had. JG: How would you describe the Jewish environment in your home when you grew up? (00:07:00) JR: My parents considered themselves Reform Jews. They were not keepers of Kashrut, my father definitely not. We even had Christmas trees, which was, I guess, part of the assimilated Jewish culture at the time. I know we had relatives who also had Christmas celebrations, more as an American holiday and as kind of a general custom of the time. It was certainly not out of worship of Jesus or things of that sort. But in any case, my parents considered themselves Reform Jews. They were members of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which was located near La Brea Ave in Los Angeles. And they were also founders of a temple in Brentwood, which is in West Los Angeles, called the University Synagogue. And the rabbi there was a man named Julian Feinberg (00:08:00) and I always had very positive — he scared me a little bit — I always had positive feelings towards him. JG: So this was another Reform synagogue? JR: Another Reform synagogue. Yeah, and actually I’ve gone in there in recent years, and my father’s name is still on a memorial plaque, so it hasn’t changed too much since then. JG: What kind of Jewish education did you have when you were a child? JR: Well, from about six years old on, I think I remember going to Sunday school. University Synagogue had a Sunday school. My memories from there are fragmentary. I don’t have a lot of — I can’t remember exactly what we were taught. But we were — at some point there was a session — there was more than one session in the day, and the 3 Joel Rosenberg, 08/03/16 latter session was a Hebrew language class that I took, so I learned a little rudimentary Hebrew as a kid. I can’t remember if it was biblical Hebrew or modern Hebrew or some amalgam, but in any case, I was exposed to the (00:09:00) language, and enjoyed it. Later on, from age eleven on basically, I was studying for bar mitzvah, and that involved afternoon Hebrew school and working with the cantor at the synagogue, Samuel Brody, who later himself became a rabbi. You can Google him actually. He’s located now in the San Francisco Bay area. JG: Tell me about your bar mitzvah. JR: [laughs] JG: I gather it was an interesting experience. JR: Well, I’ve often considered it a failure in certain ways. First of all, I didn’t actually learn Torah cantillation tropes, and so essentially I just read in a monotone voice some of the Hebrew of the text, of the biblical text. And then at some point I gave a drash (00:10:00) — I can’t remember. It was kind of pedantic. I remember I told the cantor at one point that I was interested in Jewish literature, and so he connected me with a couple of sources.